Our Goof, the President

It wouldn’t be fair to say that President Obama is dumb, but I think it is accurate to say that he is a goof. Thus his style, formerly described as analytical…cerebral…aloof…now appears deer-in-the-headlights clueless. The Drudge Report, in the unfair but funny style that it sometimes adopts, contrasts our President with Russia’s de facto ruler:
That’s unfair, but this isn’t: why can’t Obama be a man and admit that his predecessor, George Bush, deserves credit for the surge that has made possible the troop withdrawal for which Obama desperately takes credit? Byron York documents the Obama administration’s contortions on Iraq:

At Monday’s White House briefing, spokesman Robert Gibbs gave reporters a preview of President Obama’s speech on Iraq. Obama will apparently take credit for withdrawing U.S. troops — “We are completing a drawdown of almost 100,000 troops that…many did not think was possible,” Gibbs said — but is unlikely to acknowledge any special role played by George W. Bush’s troop surge. …
“Does he believe that President Bush deserves any credit for the surge, laying the groundwork for troop withdrawal?” a reporter asked Gibbs.
“I’d point you to the many comments that the president has made throughout a number of years about the role that increasing the number of our troops has played, just as a Sunni Awakening has played, just as a better political environment has played,” Gibbs said. “I think that the president will get a chance to talk about a lot of that.”
Later, another reporter tried again. “Does the president believe the surge worked?”
“The president always believed that you would change part of the security situation by vastly increasing the number of troops,” Gibbs said. “But again I think it was important — and the president was criticized for this throughout the campaign — and that is saying that we were not going to accomplish all of what needed to be done in Iraq simply militarily, that there had to be a political accommodation. We understand, again, that if you look at what happened with the Sunni Awakening, there were a whole host of factors that led us to a point in which the president can make good on his commitment to take almost 100,000 combat troops out of Iraq, to fundamentally change our mission in Iraq, to put the Iraqis in the lead for not just their security but their politics and their future. And I think that’s what’s ultimately tremendously important.”
Later, another question: “Why not give President Bush credit for ordering the surge?”
“Again…I’d be happy to circulate the president’s comments that go back to 2007 and go back to 2008 on this,” Gibbs said.
Since Gibbs says it is important to examine Obama’s old statements on the surge, there is this, from January 2007: “We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war,” Obama said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “And until we acknowledge that reality, we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops. I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believe that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”
A few months later, in July 2007, Obama told an audience in New Hampshire, “Here’s what we know: the surge has not worked.”
By January 2008, with the surge working, Obama revised his remarks at a debate in New Hampshire: “Now, I had no doubt — and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.”

One can debate whether Obama is a terrible President–I think he is–but I don’t think anyone can deny that he is an unmanly jerk.